“Lovers,” Piaf said proudly, “now go to bed with my songs,
Parisians make love to Piaf when they wish.
But since Paris is making love more than once in a night
I have to keep serving it a new musical dish!”

“Death does not exist,” she’d laugh then she’d sing,
“Because you can live forever in a song,”
And her emotional power crackled like lightning,
In a voice that never seemed to go wrong —

And with it she’d happily celebrate wrongdoers,
Like ‘Le Contrabandier,’
For to her such a smuggler was ‘a sort of poet’
And she’d often have criminals to stay.

“They pay me with warmth, I pay them with songs,
Tu vois, when I’m Piaf I’m no longer on earth,
Singing’s the way that I escape to another world
Where unloved orphans enjoy a new birth.”